Album: Black Age Blues
Year: 2015
Rating: 84/100
Goatsnake are, by all accounts, rightly regarded as doom metal royalty. Having put their name to such monumental efforts as "Dog Days" and "Flower of Disease", and with appearances at festivals such as Temples under their belt, Greg Anderson and Pete Stahl team up yet again here for their first activity in the studio since 2004's EP "Trampled Under Hoof". "Black Age Blues" is their first return to the studio since then.
What follows on "Black Age Blues" is Goatsnake doing what they do best: slow, low and heavy as hell, with an even dirtier blues groove than they had previously exhibited. Greg Anderson's riffs are as fuzzed out as they ever were, and Pete Stahl is in fine voice as always, providing additional harmonica solos on the tracks "Elevated Man" and their tribute to Jimi Hendrix, "Jimi's Gone". Elsewhere, "Coffee & Whiskey" is slow, low and much more bluesy than before from Goatsnake, closing track "A Killing Blues" has a neat point where the musicians fade out leaving Pete Stahl on his own before the rest of the band comes back in for a wonderfully heavy outro, and the title track and "House of the Moon" provide some of the more soulful numbers, as does "Jimi's Gone".
"Black Age Blues" might not be quite on the same level as their magnum opus, "Flower of Disease", but it doesn't half run it close. All the songs are very well put together as always, but you just think that if Goatsnake can write songs as good as this in their sleep, you have to wonder how good they can really be if they put their mind to it. Not a truly excellent album, but a very good one.
Track list
- Another River to Cross
- Elevated Man
- Coffee & Whiskey
- Black Age Blues
- House of the Moon
- Jimi's Gone
- Graves
- Grandpa Jones
- A Killing Blues
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